The adventures of Miss Despina

My self-esteem has been all over the place this weekend. I’ve deepened existing friendships and met wonderful people just out of the blue. I’ve realised who my true friends are, and who the people are who just bother with me when there’s no-one else around.

I’ve been asking myself whether you can take back things you said, not because you didn’t mean them at the time, but because they’re no longer valid. I’ve been wondering whether some differences between people will always remain irreconsilable. I’ve been wishing I didn’t let people so far into my life, that I could put up walls like they do. I’ve been wishing I had a way of expressing myself other than shouting.

But it’s been a good weekend. I just had to get all those thoughts out of my system. Get comfy!

Train to Brno

I woke up at 5:30 on Saturday planning to get the 8 o’clock train to Brno. At 5:31 I thought feck this! and at 7:30 I got up, and caught the 9:54 to Brno. I had no idea which route we were taking or indeed how long it would take us. I was too busy enjoying the unusually plush compartment I’d somehow managed to get all to myself! Alas, the visit from the ticket inspector came all too soon. He barged into my carriage, 45, balding, fat and sweaty.

"Ohhhhh, slečno" (Mademoiselle) he said. A grave look spread over his face, as he asked to see my ticket again, and my ID. Shit, I thought, I’m going the wrong sodding way, I won’t be in Brno til 5 at this rate, I’ll have to get a train back to Prague from the middle of nowhere, and I’m braving it all without my phrase book… However, it turned out the problem was just that I was in first class when I should have been in second. To be honest I was more bothered by the fact he was standing there virtually slavvering over me, insisting on touching my face, kissing my hand, and telling me in Czech how pretty I was.

I couldn’t get out of there quickly enough!

Eventually found a seat in second class, far away, sharing a crowded carriage with a few young bronzed travellers, and a cuddly couple. She was a quiet, plump brunette about my age, and he was easily ten years older. Yes, I approve! They clearly adored each other, I saw the look on his face as she slept on his shoulder. Made me think about when Jez and I will take the train from Prague to Krakow, and all the hopes I have for that trip.

About two hours later, I got off the train with one of the bronzed travellers. We walked a way down the platform, wondering why we couldn’t see any famous monuments or anything. We quickly asked the J-D couple if we were in Brno. They laughed at us and motioned that we should get back on the train!

Brno

One hour later, we reached Brno. I was exhausted from trying a) not to fall asleep, and b) to speak Czech to the young guy who was actually Slovakian, (and looked startlingly like a friend of Jez’s)! I jumped on a tram, wandered around the centre, had a caffiene fix, started shaking, went in a church, felt better, then met up with Marghy, an Italian girl I met in my French class in February. I had a fantastic time with her and her friend Carlotta, walking the historical centre of Brno, learning all about the city and the history, and drinking beer and espresso with these two gorgeous Italians. Sadly, every time I tried to speak Italian, Czech started coming out, but this was only to be expected I suppose.

It meant a lot to me that they wanted to show me round, and like Marghy, I was really moved when we met up. She’s a classical musician, a very good clarinetist, who has played in all my favourite churches in Roma, but feels the need to do a "sensible" degree. She is so clever and lovely, I wish her all the luck in the world.

Memories

I felt nostalgic for our French lessons, our teacher Samir who was so smiling and encouraging and let us talk about anything, and all the lovely Erasmus students from all over the world. I remember our first lesson in January, comparing Christmas traditions. I told everyone about when we arrived at my boyfriend’s parents’ house for New Year, his mother gave us separate rooms, his brother cheated at Scrabble, and we saw a most unconvincing transvestite in the village pub.

"Oh, *Despina*…" he sighed (I don’t think he’s ever met anyone quite as folle as me!) "et qu’est-ce que t’as mangé?"

I couldn’t remember the word for venison, and made do with

"Le Bambi!"

He told me he would miss our class the most, and was so overjoyed when I sent him a postcard from Budapest, he phoned me up to thank me. (Except I thought it was someone from a call centre at first!)

Brno-Prague

I felt so sad when I got on the train to go back to Prague. The girls were off to Vienna at 6 a.m. so I didn’t want to stay there too long. Thankfully, for a small charge I could upgrade to a train that would get me home by midnight. I sat myself down in a carriage with a Czech woman and another guy and asked them both of I had to make a reservation to sit here. The woman didn’t know and the guy said in English that he didn’t speak Czech and was glad to hear someone speaking English. We spoke English for a little while but then he ran out of words and said that although he was Brazilian, he’d been living in France for the last year. We switched to French, and talked all the way back to Prague, apart from a brief sleep. He saved me from my own company and the dark places in my mind. A really cheerful, open, funny person, a cinema student, and a musician with a love of traditional Brazilian percussion, the Beatles, and Yann Tiersen.

Bad Samaritan

I found out a lot about him, including that he was only in Prague for two days, had no map, no plans, and nowhere to stay. The friend he had been planning to stay with had not been in touch, and when he finally made contact the guy was in a bar and not making much sense. We arrived at the main station, and I said he would be able to stay at my hostel. A bus and a metro later, we were in my hostel where I was shocked by the nighty rate they quoted. I asked the girl to "re-think" but the figure was still too much. I couldn’t share my room with him, as much as I wanted to help. I felt so bad as I put him back on the night bus, but he insited, "non, non, arrete de parler comme ca, tu m’as aidé" - I still felt rotten though, as he went off to meet a friend of a friend in a strange city and sleep on a floor somewhere.

Despina Tours

The next day, I met him at 2:30 at "the horse" (the statue on Wenceslas Square). Sadly after having had such a negative impression of Prague, he’d booked his ticket to Germany for 8 the following morning, and was clearly very tired. He’d also had his phone robbed on the metro - I felt so guilty, no wonder he wanted to leave! I had only a few hours to change his opinion of Prague, and get him out of what he coined "le centre moche" - the ugly centre - a term of which I approve!

We walked to the Old Town Square and watched the famous clock chime the hour, saw the skeleton ringing the bell, the statues moving and the apostles appearing at the windows. We crossed the Charles Bridge and caught a tram up to the castle, where we managed to catch the changing of the guard and marvel at the panoramic views and les toits rouges (red roofs), then we walked down to the Malá Strana, drank espresso and said goodbye.

I hoped he would meet me in the evening, not simply because I enjoyed his company and we had so much in common, but also because I don’t think you can say you’ve seen Prague until you’ve seen it at night. If only he’d stayed another day, he could have seen Kampa, Vyšehrad, Josefov, and all the other parts of Prague. In the end we didn’t meet. I hope he’ll always have a good memory of the city, even if we never speak again. I don’t even have a photo of him, maybe I made it all up. It just feels so incomplete, I want a proper chance to thank the person who saved my self-esteem.

Back down to earth

Spent last night watching a film with M, with a curry and a beer- it’s amazing, you just walk down to the pub with a 2 litre water bottle, and they fill it with beer for the price of one pint in a British pub! Bless you M, you’re a special person and I’m lucky that you came out here with me, otherwise I might possibly be going mad. Tonight I think it’s pizza and Frasier, with plans to go the Bollywood night at the open air cinema in the middle of the river.

Something to look foward to

One of my craziest friends arrives here on Friday. He’s stuck in a tedious job saving up to go back to uni for his PhD and is in need of a holiday, so I’m going to use my newly acquired tourism expertise and make sure he has a brilliant time. Then next week I’m going to Olomouc (nice town a few hours from Prague) for two days, and meeting up with someone rather special when I get back. I can’t tell you how excited I am about meeting up with this lady, who is the only other person I’ve ever known with my first name (are you all curious now?) and who lives in Prague. I finally tracked her down - through good old facebook - and she comes back from her holidays next week. And she has asked me to do possibly the most special singing gig I could ever hope to do…

But that’s all I’m saying.

x D x

…It turned out to be something so unpronouncable that it made my head hurt even more. I know the Czech for Must. Drink. Coffee. Now. And that will do.

Czechs really know how to stare. I mean stare. Thankfully it was finally sunny enough this morning for me to wear my sunglasses, which as you may have guessed, I feel incomplete without. Add to that my fringe that covers half my face, and my ever-present earphones, and I was well on my way to being cocooned. But I just can’t work out why they stare so much. Is it just at me because I look so English? Or do they all stare at each other too, only I haven’t noticed it? It’s not a sneaky peek here and there, they’re not ashamed of staring at you, oh no, if they want to gawp at you, then gawp they will!

(I love Czechs by the way, I don’t want this to sound like a Xenophobic rant because it really isn’t. Czechs are great. One of my best friends in Manchester is Czech. They are typically very obliging and tolerant of my language skills and are very kind and smiley. I also enjoy the Czech sense of the absurd, more on this in later posts.)

Ended up in the pub across the road from the hotel last night. There are three pubs there and we went for the nice but slightly more expensive one. (I’ve realised that the only distinguishing feature of dieting Despina is that now she drinks white wine rather than beer when she goes out. In fact, two glasses of white wine for every beer she would have had, and then gets back to her flat and eats whatever rubbish she can find.*)

God, drinking makes me grumpy though! I should really stop, I was getting really ranty. ("Why are you all judging me! Sleeping in the same bed as my boyfriend doesn’t make me a slag! I like my hair! Leonard Cohen would beat Shakespeare in a fight any day! You’re all freaks. Uhhh.") Then I got back to the flat at midnight-ish, Andrea and Kyne were playing cards, I sorted out my laundry, I think, then tried to pack for my two weeks in a plush apartment with Jez on the other side of town. Then I seem to remember calling Jez on my mobile for 20 minutes. It probably went something like this:

"allo mon cher!" (hic)

"hello… (sigh)… how are you?"

"Oui oui, ca va tres bien merci! Ale Jé-je, tu me manques! Mais ca ne fera pas longtemps que tu seras ici, dans mes…"

…and so on. As usually happens when I’ve been drinking, I spoke Despina French thoughout the entire converation. I also do it in taxis, based on the sound theory that taxi drivers hate French people less than English people, and in restaurants, based on the sound theory that a) the place is probably bugged and b) I can speak utter filth - only with such crap grammar that he just laughs. That poor man. I think he’s resigned himself to it now. The worst was when I started speaking "Frzech" to him, saying "tak" rather than "donc", "ale" rather than "mais", and negating all my verbs just by shoving "ne" on the front of them, which is correct in Czech but not so good in French! ("Qu-est-ce que t’as bu, cherie?")

So here I am at work, blogging whilst doing this proof-reading they’ve given me. Well, it’s not like they’re paying me. 

The lovely one will arrive at 10 tonight, and we will go off to our apartment in a nice part of town, where we will live for nearly two weeks. I’ve missed him so much, I’ve missed the part of myself that only he brings out. And the beauty of having a long time together means that we will actually be living together, not just trying to cram a load of touristy stuff into a 5-day visit. We can sit in bed watching DVDs. We can cook together, fill the place with flowers and candles if we wish, play our favourite music. We can be normal for a while.

But for now, some 19th century stomach-clamping forceps are calling me.

Ciao, D x

*Not actual rubbish. I wasn’t that drunk. I mean crisps, cheese, and whatever else I was eating. Grrrr.

***UPDATE Apparently I was giggling on and on about "calins adultes", a term I managed to coin, which roughly equates to what my friend Jen calls "a special hug for grown-ups". Oh dear. Jez, just don’t tell me any more***

I think I’ve finally decided what I’m going to do with my last year of uni. It’s a question of balance between the singing and the academic. Too little singing and not only will it be bad for my career in that I’ll get no experience and no-one will hear me, I may also shrivel up and die. Too much singing and I’ll either have a repeat of last November where I almost went crazy with rehearsals and coursework, or I’ll fail uni.

Firstly the academic stuff:

• No dissertation.
• Instead I’ll take Italian level 2, since that’s the only thing I’m very good at in uni, and do a project about something that interests me.
• Maybe begin learning Spanish on the side, if I can get it funded again.

Work experience:

• It’s not as glam as Prague, but I’m going to try and do some work in the media centre of the Alliance Francaise in Manchester. Which reminds me I should probably email them.
• Get a part-time library job. So I actually know what it’s all about.
• Be a personal assistant to the director of a show. Which basically means looking after his diary, and doing jobs he would rather delegate than do himself. The advantages of this are manifold for both of us: for me, experience, for him, relative sanity.
• No stupid shop-jobs. I’d rather put 9 hours a day towards passing the final year of my degree and having a good time doing my thing.

Then the singing stuff:

• Apparently a local cathedral choir is desperate for sopranos. They rehearse on Wednesday nights so it wouldn’t be a case of weekly sight-singing. I’ve been having withdrawal symptoms from Catholic mass, and to be involved in something so prestigious would be a brilliant experience for me. I could also fit it in around the other singing I do.
• No Bugsy Malone in November, even though my society at uni is doing it. I’ve got 3 concerts around that time, with different repertoire in each, and I’ll have a heavy workload too. So I’m contenting myself with being PA to the director.
• A cabaret and a lunchtime recital already booked for November. I stupidly undersold myself for the cabaret and am struggling to find a pianist. But I’m being heard again, after too many months away!
• Lots of singing with the wonderful opera group I’m in in Manchester. The standard is excellent as we are all proper singers, and because everyone is good, no-one is competing, and the atmosphere is productive and positive. Next concert in December.
• A part in Iolanthe in April 2008. I say a part, because I’m a good enough singer, and if I don’t get a part, there’s no point spending all that time and effort on a production that means nothing on my CV.
• See my singing teacher again, religiously. It’s so long since I saw her, I hope things will still be ok between us, and that she’ll understand I’ve been ill and stressed and busy and not had anything to work up to. We shall see.
• Will try to get my Wedding Singer business off the ground. I have a series of marketing strategies up my sleeve, so that I can actually earn from my singing instead of a few quid here and there. This would benefit me in so many ways.

And then in summer, hopefully I will graduate and have to face the real world! No, save me!